Mockingbird Knits

Why this gal's sittin'out the swap

2006-04-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

So--I was all excited and geared up to join Scout's Dye-O-Rama extravanganza... That is, until last Thursday, when I brought some not-so-Kool-Aid home, and proceeded to have one of the most disappointing afternoons on record (and made a drippy, smelly mess of my kitchen...)

Here goes the sad tale...

It started out nicely enough. Unless you've been impervious to all the dyeing excitement, you'll easily understand how excited I was at the outset of this venture. Let me add also that I have this kinda-sorta notion that, maybe one day, I can spin, dye & sell yarn like some of my heroines (even if I'm too poor to buy yer stuff doesn't mean I'm not a huge fan of y'all!) So here I was in my kitchen, plastic baggies on my hands, about to embark on my glorious dyeing destiny.

Well, hm. This is what happened. Judge for yourselves the magnitude of my dismay.

I guarantee you that a washed-out box of crayons had nothing to do with my original vision for this yarn--my head was full of Fleece Artist--but nevertheless, this was what I produced. I was trying to take deep, slow breaths to keep my cool (not by any stretch an easy feat in a kitchen full of noxious Kool-Aid fumes), which led me to the realization that the Fleece Artist most emphatically does not use Kool-Aid to dye her glorious colourways, and that I shouldn't try to make Kool-Aid do what it decidedly could not, would not do. I should embrace its essence instead--listen to the Kool-Aid, and the Kool-Aid will tell you what to do. (This sounds all peaceful and Zen-like--it was not. It was me choking back sobs and screams while mopping up all the nasty runoff that was dripping all over the kitchen, scaring the cats and, possibly, even my calm & loving husband.) I had a packet of orange and a packet of Spiderman raspberry left. I did the only reasonable thing a desperate gal could do--I over-dyed. Here's the yarn's sorry, drippy ass hanging out in the yard:

Here's its sorry, tangled ass mid-wind (because of course it turned a completely different but oh-so-potent brand of evil on me when I started to wind it, so I left it to fend for its own, because who wants to spent a whole evening swearing at and being beat-the-crap-out-of by some yarn that they don't even like?)

(You'll notice that, left to its own devices, the yarn did not wind itself into a ball.)

I do not like this yarn. It may be tolerable if it didn't stink of acid candy and wasn't a bitter reminder of utter and total failure, but things being what they are, I don't like it. The twisty, sorry mess is destined for the garbage pail. (Or, maybe, someone out there's got a hamster who'd like it for its litter? Maybe you need something to stuff a cushion with? I'll happily mail it to Austria, wherever--just say the word.) The ball I may keep--the way Cate Blanchett keeps Joseph Fiennes around at the end of Elizabeth: to remind herself how close she came to danger. But it will never, ever be knit into anything. And here's why: in a final attempt to make peace with this nasty piece of yarn, I took it into my lap, along with a pair of size 3 circs, and decided to see what I could do about a tiny little swatch, and as I pulled the strand to cast on the bitch snapped right at the center of the ball.
(And no, the hypothesis that maybe I wound it too tight is not acceptable--this yarn's out to get me.)

But you haven't heard the worst: I'm not entirely dissuated from bringing Kool-Aid into this house again. What can I say--I'm poor, I have a dream, and a huge hank of Knitpicks dye-yer-own laceweight kicking around. Call me crazy.

No, really, please--call me crazy, so I don't put myself through this again.

PS: Oh yeah, I finished the ballet T from Lood-d-loop. Doesn't it look nice, hanging on the wooden hanger? That's good, since you'll never see me wearing it: it makes me look like a bloated rain barrel. That's okay! I enjoyed knitting it, and learned a valuable lesson about knitting close-fitting garments in chuky yarn--i.e., don't do it. But here's a question: what do I do with the blasted thing now? I still have a ton of that yarn and no wish to knit with it again soon, so no point frogging it. Chair-back cozy, maybe?

Ta-da!

2006-04-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

I give you... finished minisweater! I finished the second sleeve & the seaming last night. Many an end has been woven in, I tell ya. There's been some major surgery performed as well, as the armhole stitches all went gaping mad as they were being held by waste yarn--I had to sew them up or else have some pretty serious ventilation going on (maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad thing.) I'm afraid I did do a pretty horrible job of the seaming--hopefully no one will notice. They shouldn't, unless there's some knitterly behaviour I've yet to notice, where decent & respectable ladies ask you to show them your pits. "Hmmm, d'you knit that? Alright girl, hands up!"

My Knitpicks yarn didn't come in for the long weekend as I hoped it would, so I could play with Kool-Aid. (Gotta practice--the way things are now, you would do well to wish I won't be your Dye-O-Rama swap partner. You will sign up anyway, won't you?) But it's been a good knitting weekend anyway--I cast on for the ballet t-shirt from Teva Durham' Loop-d-Loop. It's a dead-easy pattern form a book with gorgeous, real complex stuff (short-row fair-isle, anyone?), along with fairly strange model hairdos. Anyhoo, I think this is just great, cause when I'm done I can say, oh-so-casually, "Teva Durham? Oh yeah, I've knit her." A real soothing knit, soft fat yarn on fat plastic needles. Yarn's the same as the one I used for Bobblicious. Some day soon I'll post the story on that yarn. I promise.

There were also some yarn purchases. Two balls of Circulo Anne black mercerized cotton for Orangina, and three skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in Obscure Teal that are just screaming to be made into a circular shrug. I've been up and down the 'net and all around my LYS trying to find some black cotton yarn for Orangina, without success. Either too pricey, discontinued, not available. I had finally resigned myself to use Bernat Sox, thinking that by sheer force of will I could keep the acrylic from melting on me during my SIL's wedding in Central Texas in August. Fortunately for all, we won't have to find out whether I can pull it off, since when I went to pick up the Fleece I found these here balls... and cheap, eight-fifty each. Blessed be.

I leave you with some random Easter weekend prettiness: Mr Darcy with daffodils, and anemones with tulips.

Can you name this WIP?

2006-04-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

How about now?

How about now?

It's a week's worth of progress on the minisweater, which needs no introduction. I'm doing it with Sugar n' Cream cotton in cream and black, on Susan Bates Quicksilver size 9 circs. I was having a bit of difficulty at first, getting in the groove of the pattern, figuring out where the sleeves were, all the while keeping track of the different-coloured rows, but soon enough I was having a ball. I'm still a fairly new knitter, so things like raglan increases are very exciting. A couple of things are off, though: because I change the yarn on RS knit rows, I cannot do the first inchin garter stitch like the pattern calls for, lest I get irksome peek-a-boo contrast stitching. This bothered me at first--what I get instead is a single garter stitch row every four rows--but then I thought I could decide it was cool, and it would be, so it is. Plus, knitting in cotton, there isn't as much rolling so it isn't strictly a fit/design issue. Also, I didn't clue in til too late that I was supposed to M1 for the increases: I've been kf/b instead, and so it doesn't look quite as it's supposed to. But these are minor complaints. Overall, I'm very pleased with the pattern, and can tell you right now I'll be making it again. I'm not too terribly thrilled with the stark stitch definition of the cotton, but I'm real poor and already had the yarn, plus it'll be cool and washable for the summer--double bonus. I've knitted a whole stripe as fast as I could first thing this morning so I could get to the oh-so-exciting part of separating the sleeves from the body. So clever! You can see in the picture how delighted I am with this whole top-down, raglan business. (Actually, I'm cracked up because DH, as he was taking the picture, said "Now think of how sexy I am...")

Speaking of sexy--that second picture is solid evidence of how great my husband is. Late at night I get dangerously silly--a surefire sign in this house that it's past ten-thirty is my hysterical laughter--and often like to stick stuff on DH's head-- articles of clothing, scarves and bows, what-have-you--and then laugh til my legs give way and my stomach hurts. He bears this with surprising patience and grace. In this case, he felt that the minisweater looked like those wigs that judges and magistrates wore in the days of yore--you know, dignified. So, there's my husband, putting on a dignified look--with a half-done boobholder on his head. What's not to love?

A note to my non-knitter readers: here are a few of the abbreviations I use. WIP is for work in progress. DH is for darling husband. SIL is for sister-in-law (etc, in kind.) FO is for finished object. LYS is for local yarn shop. I'll post more as I think of them.

Sunny mornin' at home

2006-04-05T11:15:00.000-07:00

It's bloomin' beautiful around here today: the yard is bright and warm (why oh why, then, am I here at the computer?) and sunlight is flooding the kitchen. The WIP you see there on the table is #2 of Delia's wristwarmer pattern (I shortened it a bit: did three instead of four repeats of the cable, and only four rows of ribbing--I diggit.) This is the second pair of these I make, and every bit as much fun as the first. I guess this is a good time to tell the sad tale of the first pair. I was knitting on the bus on my way to work, eager to knit every stitch I could before getting off (this was that blissful time before the whole Jaywalker thing went south) and flew out the doors at the very last moment before the bus rolled away from my stop and--you guessed it--left my handmade babies on the bus, which I didn't realize til later. I wasn't too concerned at first, since I've once left an umbrella on the bus (in very similar circumstances) and it toured around town all day and was waiting for me on the bus as I was riding home. I figured I'd get the wrist warmers back by then end of the day. Not so. They were gone, and two days of calls to the lost & found yielded zip. I hope they're keeping someone warm. Leaving handknits behind may be the only way this selfish, only-child knitter ever knits something for someone else.

And where, you might wonder, is the first blue wrist warmer? Glad you asked! Here it be, with the finished capelet.
I tried to do a hoody-type thing with the capelet. Capelet doesn't want a hood. The lesson here is that trying on a handknit while still on the needles will give you a very skewed idea of said handknit's dimension (you'll tell me that's bloody obvious and I would agree, but I only seem to learn things by doing them wrong the first time.) So when I cast off I realized that what I had wasn't a snug collar but a wide shoulder-hugging boatneck deal, at which point I didn't exactly relish more ripping & more math. You wanna be that way? Fine, be a hoodless capelet. (All the more reason for me to make Greta at a later date...though the ones in the book look much better than that long gray business, but it gives you an idea. BTW, do get that book.)

Not sure what's next for Mockingbird's needles. I might attempt the socks again--Broadripple this time--or cast on for a minisweater with some black and cream cotton I have (this striped version inspired me... oooh, pretty.) My list of summer knits is growing alarmingly: Somewhat Cowl, and Orangina in black for my SIL's wedding (I picture it with a short row of fat black pearls and a knee-lenght black circle skirt.)

I know other people have already kvetched about the knitting on Grey's Anatomy this weekend. Sandra Oh's face expresses exactly how I feel about it. "Girl, what the f--- do you think you're doing with those huge needles?" Y'know, I bet that show pays big bucks to doctors and surgeons to assure accuracy with all the medical stuff. Is it too much to ask, to have had a knitting expert give advice? No frikkin' way did Izzy knit a whole sweater in a day and then wear it for three hours so it smelled like her before giving it to the recipient, all the while working rounds in the hospital. Who do they think they're kidding? Not me. Pshaw. And I was sooo excited when I saw previews. "Honey, there's gonna be knitting!" I chirped. I was so let down. For shame.

Folks--it's sunny out. I'm blowin' this taco stand!

(And yes, that means I'll probably go at least a whole hour without checking to see if the new Knitty is up.)

Yarn's a-comin'

2006-03-30T16:48:00.000-08:00

It is a beautiful spring day in Victoria--daffodils bloomin' a-plenty, magnolias unfurling unashamedly--and Bobblicious got its first outing. I got several compliments on it--looks like it's going to be a real crowd-pleaser, the kind of garment you don't wear if you don't feel like discussing it with all the salespeople you encounter. It is rather difficult not to blurt out, "Thanks, I made it!" when you hear that "Nice sweater!" (Bragging isn't very nice.) It is also difficult not to correct them--it's a shrug. It would seem that only knitters know about shrugs...

I have placed two yarn orders in the last two days--yarn's a-comin', folks! From A Swell Yarn Shop, I'm getting one skein each of the Oh-la-la sockyarn, the chunky May Flowers, and the worsted Shaggy, all of which are Angela's own handpainted goodness. (The sockyarn has mysteriously vanished from her site... it's a gorgeous pink-green-brown mix, sooo my colours.) The sad thing about that order is, she doesn't ship to Canada, so I have to have the yarn shipped to Texas, to our friend Sean's house, for him to bring when he comes to visit in May. But the yarn is in Seattle, which is so much closer to here! So close, yet...

More stuff coming from Knitpicks. I bought their Sweet Mary Jane cardigan pattern, and their Shadow merino laceweight in Sunset to knit it with. Five skeins of turquoise Shine will go towards Picovoli. There's also some paint-yer-own sockyarn and lace yarn in there that have Kool-Aid written all over them. That order is coming straight here, to tide me over until the Swell stuff arrives.

Well into the decreases for the Little Blue Riding Hood capelet. I'm modifying the decreases so the opening is smaller, to better accomodate the hood. I was all done with them last week, only to realize that it made for too short a lenght. So I ripped back, knitted a few more inches of stockinette, and now I'm nearing completion on the main body again. At least I know that my modifications are yielding the desired effect. I should get it all done tonight, watching the new Pride & Prejudice movie with a girlfriend--which will suck, obviously, as we all know that there is only one true Mr Darcy, and it is Colin Firth. (Actually, that's not the whole truth either... my cat is also Mr Darcy, and look how dashing...)

Enter the blogring!

2006-03-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

Yeah! Mockingbird gets to play along with Pacific Northwest knitters! Check out the fully-functional code down on the right... sweeeet. I'm enjoying getting to know my neighbours already. Do drop in for tea, ladies!

Kinky sock yarn & cathartic frogging

2006-03-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

You'd be surprised (I certainly was) by how calm I was last night when I gave up, after yet another cast-on mishap with the now-frayed-and-kinky (but still so gorgeous!) sock yarn, and buried it deep at the bottom of my stash basket, along with its two sets of evil twin acolytes, Circs 1 & 3. They are not to be looked at again for another couple of weeks (for which my dear, patient hubby is very grateful), by which time I hope that the Evil Fairy of New Projects will have taken her curses elsewhere.

Instead of knitting, last night DH & I frogged the navy blue Alafoss Lopi scarf--it felt sooo good to rip--and balled it all up so that, this morning, I could start fresh and cast on for the capelet I planned to use the yarn for. Such blissful mindless knitting with the thick, sturdy lopi!

Curses!

2006-03-15T15:35:00.000-08:00

Does this sort of thing happen to you?

With huge relief the other night I cast on some plain jane slippers, using my shiny pink size 6 dpns and a bargain-bin-rescue skein of forest green Paton's Shetland Chunky. I felt like myself again--not the grumpy, prickly self I've been lately, but calm and content. I knit away for a good while, humming along nicely, until I started to wonder seriously what the hell was going on. It only started to dawn on me that I was knitting a heel when the fabric started to warp and assume a distinct cup-like shape. Not until much later did I realize I could've easily known about this all along if, reading the pattern, I had actually read all the lines, not just let my eyes greedily skip to cast on 36 sts. Lesson 1: read pattern.

We had a couple of good days, Plain Jane and I. She took me to and from work on the bus, kept me company during my much break when she amazed me by the simple but clever trick of casting on additional stitches at the end of a row to create the strap (I'm still new at this, very little causes me to wonder--or curse.) I had even, in a fit of inspiration, decided to cast on the strap in a different colour. Oh, those were the days. Now she lies in an unhappy heap in my knitting basket, half-frogged and nearly-abandoned, after I realized that the the foot was too long and the strap was going to wrap around the base of my toes and that it just wouldn't do. So.

Before work on Saturday I sauntered into the craft store at the mall near the library (it is closing soon, which is very sad, but means that I get to add to my collection of circs at liquidation prices, niiiiice...) and bought size 3 circs in an attempt to fix the gauge issue that stands between me & the blissful knitting of Jaywalker. Not. To. Be. Recklessly ignoring my own best advice to never cast anything on after nine-thirty pm I attempted last night to get going with sock knitting and it took no less than three attemps to get the requisite number of un-twisted stitches on the needles, all nicely linked and everything. But it's of absolutely no consequence because as you probably already know and have gasped in horror when reading about it, you simply cannot knit a Jaywalker sock on size 3 needles, not with this yarn anyway, not unless you're okay with it turning into a Jaywalker hat. So--square one again. I am bitter towards all the knitting projects in my house while simultaneously longing desperately for them. I sure hope that, being newly & ecstatically happily married, I don't have some deeply-rooted need for dysfunctional relationships that knitting has come to fill. That would suck.

To brighten the day: it isn't a proper FO picture, but here's Miss Zola lovin' some Bobblicious.

Bobbled over

2006-03-12T20:20:00.000-08:00

I didn't mean to finish it. I swear. Last Thursday morning, there was one row of bobbles left on Bobblicious--that's thirteen bobbles, and I only meant to knit a few just after I got up, leaving the rest to be finished at my book group that night. But I was in the zone, man, those dastardly little clumps of yarn were just sailing off my needles and there I was, blowing off my quotidian morning reading & writing and finishing the whole darn row. Now, if I were a rational individual, I would've said to myself, "Alright, very nice, now set the piece down and move on with your morning." But nooooo. I just had to try it on, go to the bathroom (which boasts the sole mirror in the house, although when it's dark you can see yourself pretty well in the French front door) and pin the thing with bobby pins, then spread it on the living room floor to be sewed up. Routine sound familiar? It's a little like the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine, tiny sliver by tiny sliver, eats up the whole slice of ancient wedding cake in Mr Peterman's office. I couldn't frikkin' help myself.

Then, as Elaine surely did, I entered a dark, dark world. Though mine wasn't intestinal upset: it was knitting withdrawal.

It seemed innocent enough at first. Coming back from my run that day (I kicked arse: fifty minutes in the sunshine, it felt sooo gooood) I "accidentally" cast on for Mash, which is basically an openwork one-piece poncho, with my still-warm size 15 needles and the other mysterious yarn of unknown content from that cool place in Montreal (story to follow very soon.) It soon became clear that the gauge was way off, the openwork not nearly open enough. This pattern wouldn't do for the yarn--no worries, I could think of something else. In the meantime, I could happily work on Jaywalker #1, even though I prefer to keep that project for the bus ride to work, and it's gotta last me a long time because I can't afford much sock yarn (story about bus knitting to follow soon as well--it's a tough thing to start a blog with a backlog of knitting tales.) Well--again, something rotten in Denmark. After having knitted about an inch and a half of my first-ever sock, I decide it's time to try it on. Too small. (The absolute bane of my existence are my chunky ankles and calves.) Check gauge--way off, half an inch off. (And I did swatch!) This situation requires one, possibly both of the following remedies: math that will severely hurt my head, and the purchase of bigger needles. Neither of which are immediate live options. Dammit. The whole thing is too painful, I set down the ball of yarn and its attendant pair of bobbing double antennae and walk away.

Moaning. "I have nothing to kniiiiiiit!" (I am a first-class whiner.)

I looked in my (pretty small) stash--nothing Wasted valuable time scrolling through patterns on the net--ditto. Moaned again. For three days. "I have nothing to kniiiiit." (My DH, ever so loving and patient, administered many long hugs and stiff drinks.) The upshot is I did finish reading KnitLit the Third on the bus.

And, last night, after our dinner guests left and hubby put on the Dylan documentary No Direction Home, I cast on.

That story--you guessed it--coming soon.

(A note on the FO: no pictures yet, but it looks exactly like the green version on Knitty, except that the first sleeve I knitted has stretched and is a good two inches longer than the other one. Oh well.)

By way of explanation

2006-03-06T09:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'll fess up: some might think me a bit of an imposter, and they wouldn't be entirely wrong. After all, I am a Canadian, a French Canadian at that--no Southerner, and so it might be said that I have a shady, if any, claim at twang, and that no amount of Flannery-and-Faulkner-reading, no amount of Lyle-Lovett-listening could right things. Granted. But here's how it happened: first I fell in love with Johnny Cash, and a Texan second, and the latter married me. And though we live in beyoootiful British Columbia right at the moment, we think longingly on the day when we will move to the Lone Star State. Texans are equal-opportunists: they realize that being born in Texas is a matter of good fortune, not good judgement, and are quick to welcome among their ranks those who have to good sense to move there. (To wit, the bumper sticker I plan to acquire when we get there: I wasn't bon in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could.) And so I listen to lots of Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zant, read cowboy literature and Katherine Anne Porter, and generally work on my twang. Bear with me.

And so to knitting. Knitting's always been looming in the distance: I knew it was something I had in me, that I would eventually get into. My maternal grandmother, who was also my godmother and whose name, Aline, is my middle name, was a legendary knitter, turning out Phentex slippers faster than anyone could hope to wear them out. She died in 2003, before I got a chance to learn from her. Other potential teachers drifted through my life, many missed opportunities, until my library coworkers started getting together to knit last November, and I finally took the plunge. Patient Toni agreed to teach me. I went to my LYS, the Beehive, where I bought some 6mm bamboo needles and, unadvisedly, some mossy green nubbly yarn. I seldom have been so excited about a $10 purchase. The night in question, we all gathered at Toni's, and she set about teaching me the basics: knit-on cast-on, and garter stitch. I had very modest hopes--I thought I would leave with an inch or two of scarf--but even these were crushed. I left with clean needles. Back home I rehearsed the motions Toni showed me, still to no avail, so I went to bed. I hardly slept. You know how it is when you've spent a day on a boat, and once you're on firm dry land again, you still feel the water's motion in your legs? That's how I felt all night, only the motions were those of knitting. I got up early, picked up yarn and needles, and successfully began to knit some rows. I swear it: I learned to knit in my dreams.

Now Toni and I eventually figured out she had taught me wrong: I can't remember exactly what I was doing, something like purling through the back of the stitch. Anyway, she set me straight, but the yarn was endlessly frustrating, and soon I gave up on my holey, misshapen pseudo-scarf. I had fallen prey to the temptation of knitting a scarf for my DH for Christmas, and relished working with the luscious Alafoss Lopi I had bought for the project (which is, also, destined for the frog pond, but that's another story.)

Since then knitting's more or less taken over my life--in a good way. I'm too poor for the too-eager-new-knitter yarn purchase binges, but my stash is slowly growing, and so is my list of must-knits. I've been lurking on many knitblogs for some time now, it's time to come out. Hello, my name is Fanny, and I'm a Knitter.

Pull up a chair, stay a spell, I've got many stories to tell.